The Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky -- Vol. 2

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 536 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

§ XXII.

THE SYMBOLISM OF THE MYSTERY-NAMES IAO AND
JEHOVAH, WITH THEIR RELATION TO THE CROSS
AND CIRCLE.

WHEN the Abbe Louis Constant -- known as Eliphas
Levi -- said in his Histoire de la Magie that the "Sepher
Jezirah, the Zohar, and the Apocalypse (of St. John)
are the master-pieces of the Occult Sciences," he ought,
if he wanted to be correct and clear, to have added, "in
Europe." It is quite true that these works contain "more
significance than words"; and that "its expression
is poetical, while in numbers it is exact." Unfortunately,
before any one can appreciate the poetry of the expressions,
or the exactness of the numbers, he will have to learn
the real significance and meaning of the terms and symbols used.
And man will never learn this so long as he remains ignorant of
the fundamental principle of the Secret Doctrine, whether
in Oriental Esotericism, or in the Kabalistical symbology: --
the key, or value, in all their aspects,of the "God"-names,
"Angel"-names, and "Patriarchal" names in
theBible --their mathematical or geometrical
value, and their relations to manifested nature.

Therefore, if, on the one hand, the Zohar "astonishes
(the mystic) by the profundity of its views and the great simplicity
of its images," on the other hand, that work misleads the
student by such expressions as those used with respect to AIN-SOPH
and Jehovah, notwithstanding the assurance that "the
book is careful to explain that the human form with which it clothes
God is but an image of the word, and that God should
not be expressed by any thought, or any form." It is well
known that Origen, Clemens, and the Rabbis confessed, with regard
to the Kabala and the Bible, to their being veiled and
secret Books; but few know that the esotericism of the Kabalistic
books in their present re-edited formis simply
another and still more cunning veil thrown upon the primitive
symbolism of these secret volumes.

The idea of representing the hidden deity by the circumference
of a Circle, and the Creative Power (male and female, or the Androgynous
WORD), by the diameter across it, is one of the
oldest symbols. It is upon this conception that every great Cosmogony
was built. With the old Aryans, the Egyptians, and the Chaldeans,
it was complete, as it embraced the idea of the eternal and immovable
Divine Thought in its absoluteness, separated entirely
from the incipient stage of (the so-called)

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 537 THE JEWS ALONE THE HEIRLOOM OF JEHOVAH.

creation; and comprised psychological and even Spiritual
evolution, and its mechanical work, or cosmogonical construction.
With the Hebrews, however, though the former conception is to
be distinctly found in the Zohar, and the Sepher Jezirah -- or
what remains of the latter -- that which has been embodied subsequently
in the Pentateuch proper, and especially in Genesis,
is simply this secondary stage, to wit, the mechanical law
of creation, or rather of construction; while theogony is hardly,
if at all, outlined.

It is only in the first six chapters of Genesis, in the
rejected Book ofEnoch, and the misunderstood
and mistranslated poem of Job, that true echoes of the
archaic doctrine may now be found. The key to it is lost, even
among the most learned Rabbis, whose predecessors in the early
period of the middle ages have preferred, in their national exclusiveness
and pride, and especially in their profound hatred of Christianity,
to cast it into the deep sea of oblivion, rather than to share
their knowledge with their relentless and fierce persecutors.
Jehovah was their own tribal property, inseparable from, and unfit
to play a part in, any other but the Mosaic Law. Violently torn
out of his original frame, which he fitted and which fitted him,
the "lord god of Abraham and Jacob" could hardly be
crammed without damage and breakage into the new Christian Canon.
Being the weakest, the Judeans could not help the desecration;
but they kept the secret of the origin of their Adam Kadmon, or
male-female Jehovah; and the new tabernacle proved a complete
misfit for the old god: they were, indeed, avenged!

The statement that Jehovah was the tribal god of the Jews and
no higher, will be denied like many other things. Yet the theologians
are not in a position to tell us, in that case, the meaning of
verses 8 and 9 in Deuteronomy, chapter xxxii. These verses say
quite plainly: "When the MOST HIGH
(not the "Lord," or "Jehovah" either) divided
to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the Sons of
Adam he set the bounds . . . according to the number of the children
of Israel. . . . The Lord's (Jehovah's) portion is
his people; Jacob is the lot of hisinheritance."
This settles the question. So impudent were the modern translators
of Bibles and Scriptures and so damaging are these verses, that,
following in the steps traced for them by their worthy Church
Fathers, each translator rendered these verses in his own way.
While the above-cited quotation is taken verbatim from
the authorized English version, in the French Bible (of the Protestant
Biblical Society of Paris, according to the version revised
in 1824 by J. E. Ostervald) one finds the "Most High"
translated by Souverain (a Sovereign!!), the "sons
of Adam" rendered by "the children of men," and
the "Lord" changed into the "Eternal." For
impudent sleight-of-hand, the French Protestant Church seems thus
to have surpassed even English ecclesiasticism.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 538 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

Nevertheless, one thing is patent: the "Lord's ("Jehovah's")
portion" is his "chosen people" and none else,
for, Jacob alone is the lot of hisinheritance. What,
then, have other nations, who call themselves Aryans, to do with
this Semitic deity, the tribal god of Israel? Astronomically,
the "Most High" is the Sun, and the "Lord"
is one of his seven planets, whether it be Iao, the genius
of the moon, or Ilda-Baoth-Jehovah, that of Saturn, according
to Origen and the Egyptian Gnostics.* Let the "Angel Gabriel,"
the "Lord" of Iran, watch over his people; and Michael-Jehovah,
over his Hebrews. These are not the gods of other nations, nor
were they ever those of Jesus. As each Persian Dev is
chained to his planet (see Origen's Copy of the Chart), so each
Hindu Deva (a "Lord") has its allotted portion, a world,
a planet, a nation or a race. Plurality of worlds implies plurality
of gods. We believe in the former, and may recognize, but will
never worship, the latter. (Vide Part III.,
"On Chains of Worlds and their Plurality.")

It has been repeatedly stated in this work that every religious
and philosophical symbol had seven meanings attached to it, each
pertaining to its legitimate plane of thought, i.e.,
either purely metaphysical or astronomical; psychic or physiological,
etc., etc. These seven meanings and their applications are hard
enough to learn when taken by themselves; but the interpretation
and the right comprehension of them become tenfold more puzzling,
when, instead of being correlated, or made to flow consecutively
out of and to follow each other, each, or any one of these meanings
is accepted as the one and sole explanation of the whole symbolical
idea. An instance may be given, as it admirably illustrates the
statement. Here are two interpretations given by two learned Kabalists
and scholars, of one and the same verse in Exodus, xxxiii,
18-23. Moses beseeches the Lord to show him his "glory."
Evidently it is not the crude dead letter phraseology as found
in the Bible that is to be accepted. There are seven
meanings in the Kabala, of which we may give two as interpreted
by the said two scholars. One of them quotes, while explaining:
"Thou canst not see my face . . . I will put thee in the
cleft of the rock . . . cover thee with my hand while I pass by.
And then I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my a'hoor,
my back; . . " and tells us in a gloss, "That is,
I will show you 'My back,' i.e., my visible universe,
my lower manifestations, but, as a man still in the flesh, thou
canst not

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

* With the Egyptian Gnostics it was Thoth (Hermes), who was chief
of the Seven (Vide "Book of the Dead"). Their
names are given by Origen, as Adonai (of the Sun) Iao
(of the Moon), Eloi (Jupiter), Sabao (Mars),
Orai (Venus), Astapkoi (Mercury), and, finally,
Ildabaoth (Saturn).

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 539 A GROTESQUE VERSE EXPLAINED.

see my invisible nature. So proceeds the Qabbalah." This
is correct, and is the cosmo-metaphysical explanation. And now
speaks the other Kabalist, giving the numerical meaning. As it
involves a good many suggestive ideas, and is far more fully given,
we may allow it more space. This synopsis is from an unpublished
MS., and explains more fully what was given in
§ XVII, "The Holy of Holies,"
page 467.

The numbers of the name Moses are those of "I
AM THAT I AM," so that the names Moses and
Jehovah are at one in numerical harmony.

The word Moses is and the
sum of the values of its letters is 345; Jehovah -- the genius
par excellence of the lunar year -- assumes the value
of 543, or the reverse of 345. . . . In the third chapter of Exodus,
in the 13th and 14th verses, it is said: And Moses said . . .
Behold when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say
unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and
they shall say, What is his name? What shall I say unto them?
and God said unto Moses -- "I am that I am."

The Hebrew words for this expression are ahiye asher ahiye,
and in the value of the sums of their letters stand thus:--

. . . This being his (God's) name, the sum of the values composing
it are 21, 501, 21are 543, or simply a use of the simple
digit numbers in the name of Moses . . . but now so ordered that
the name of 345 is reversed, and reads 543. . . . So that when
Moses asks "Let me see Thy face or glory," the other
rightly and truly replies "Thou canst not see my face"
. . . but thou shalt see me behind -- (the true sense,
though not the precise words); because the comer and the behind
of 543 is the face of 345 -- "for check and
to keep a strict use of a set of numbers to develop certain
grand results, for the object of which they are specifically
employed." "In other uses," adds the learned Kabalist,
"of the number they saw each other face to face. It is strange
that if we add 345 to 543 we have 888, which was the gnostic Kabalistic
value of the name Christ, who was Jehoshua or Joshua. And so also
the division of the 24 hours of the day gives three eights as
quotient. . . . The chief end of all this system of number checks
was to preserve in perpetuity the exact value of the Lunar year
in the natural measure of days."

This is the astronomical and numerical meaning in the secret theogony
of sidereo-cosmical gods invented by the Chaldeo-Hebrews,

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

* The Qabbalah, by Isaac Myer.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 540 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

and two meanings out of seven. The other five would astonish the
Christians still more.

The series of OEdipuses who have endeavoured to interpret the
riddle of the Sphinx, is long indeed. For many ages she has been
devouring the brightest and the noblest intellects of Christendom;
but now the Sphinx is conquered. In the great intellectual struggle
which has ended in the complete victory of the OEdipuses of Symbolism,
it is not the Sphinx, however, who, burning with the shame of
defeat, has had to bury herself in the sea, but verily the many-sided
symbol, named Jehovah, whom Christians -- the civilized nations
-- have accepted for their God. The latter has collapsed under
the too close analysis, and is -- drowned. Symbologists have discovered
with dismay that their adopted deity was only a mask for many
other gods, an Euhemerized extinct planet, at best, the
genius of the Moon and Saturn with the Jews, of the Sun and Jupiter,
with early Christians; that the Trinity was, in truth, only an
astronomical triad -- unless they accepted the more abstract and
metaphysical meanings given to it by the Gentiles -- composed
of the Sun (the Father), and the two planets Mercury (the Son)
and Venus (the Holy Ghost, Sophia, the Spirit of Wisdom,
Love and Truth, and Lucifer, as Christ, the bright and morning
Star; vide "Revelation," ch. xxii., 15). Because,
if the Father is the Sun (the elder Brother in the Eastern inner
philosophy), the nearest planet to it is Mercury (Hermes, Budha,
Thot), the name of whose mother on Earth was Maia; the planet
which receives seven times more light than any other: which fact
led the Gnostics to call their Christos, and the Kabalists their
Hermes (in the astronomical meaning), the "seven-fold light"
(vide at end of this §). Finally, this
God was Bel; the Sun being "Bel," with the Gauls,
"Helios" with the Greeks, "Baal," with the
Phoenicians; "El" in Chaldean, hence "EL-ohim,"
"Emanu-EL," El, "god," in Hebrew.
But even the Kabalistic god has vanished in the rabbinical workmanship,
and one has now to turn to the innermost metaphysical sense of
the Zohar to find in it anything like Ain-Soph, the nameless
deity and the Absolute, so authoritatively and loudly claimed
by the Christians. But it is certainly not to be found in the
Mosaic books, by those who try to read without a Key to them.
Ever since it was lost Jews and Christians have tried their best
to blend these two conceptions, but in vain. They have only succeeded
in finally robbing even the Universal Deity of ITS
majestic character and primitive meaning.

This is what was said in "Isis Unveiled":
--

It would seem, therefore, but natural to make a difference between
the mystery-god [[Iao]], adopted from the highest antiquity
by all who participated in the esoteric knowledge of the priests,
and his phonetic counterparts, whom we find treated with so little
reverence by the Ophites and other Gnostics.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 541 THE ANTIQUITY OF THE CROSS.

In the Ophite gems of King ("Gnostics") we find the
name of IAO repeated, and often confounded with
that of Jevo, while the latter simply represents one
of the genii antagonistic to Abraxas. But the name IAO
neither originated with, nor was it the sole property of the Jews.
Even if it had pleased Moses to bestow the name upon the tutelary
"Spirit," the alleged protector and national deity of
the "chosen people of Israel," there is yet no possible
reason why other nationalities should receive Him as the Highest
and One-living God. But we deny the assumption altogether. Besides,
there is the fact that Jaho or Iao was a "Mystery name"
from the beginning, for
and never came into use
before King David. Anterior to his time, few or no proper names
were compounded with Iah or Jah. It looks rather as though
David, being a sojourner among the Tyrians and Philistines (2
Samuel), brought thence the name of Jehovah. He made Zadok high
priest, from whom came the Zadokites or Sadducees. He lived and
ruled first at Hebron ,
Habir-on or Kabeir-town, where the rites of the four (mystery-gods)
were celebrated. Neither David nor Solomon recognized either Moses
or the law of Moses. They aspired to build a temple to ,
like the structures erected by Hiram to Hercules and Venus, Adon
and Astarte.

Says Furst: "The very ancient name of God, Yaho, written
in the Greek law, appears, apart from its derivation, to
have been an old mystic name of the Supreme deity of the Shemites.
Hence it was told to Moses when he was initiated at Hor-eb --
the cave -- under the direction of Jethro, the Kenite
(or Cainite) priest of Midian. In an old religion of the Chaldeans,
whose remains are to be found among the Neo-Platonists, the highest
divinity, enthroned above the seven heavens, representing the
Spiritual Light-Principle . . . . and also conceived of as Demiurgus,*
was called [[Iao]](),
who was, like the Hebrew Yaha, mysterious and unmentionable, and
whose name was communicated to the Initiated. The Phoenicians
had a Supreme God, whose name was trilateral and secret, and
he was [[Iao]]."** (Isis Unveiled),
Vol. II., p. 298.)

The Cross, say the Kabalists, repeating the lesson of the Occultists,
is one of the most ancient -- nay, perhaps, the most ancient
of symbols. This is demonstrated at the very beginning of the
Proem (Vol. I.). The Eastern Initiates show it coeval
with the circle of Deific infinitude and the first differentiation
of the Essence, the union of spirit and matter. This was rejected,
and the astronomical allegory alone was accepted and made to fit
into cunningly imagined terrestrial events.

Let us demonstrate this statement. In astronomy, as said, Mercury
is the son of Coelus and Lux -- of the sky and light, or the Sun;
in mythology he is the progeny of Jupiter and Maia. He is the
"messenger" of his Father Jupiter, the Messiah of the
Sun; in Greek, his name "Hermes," means, among other
things, the "Interpreter" -- the "Word" by
mouth; the LOGOS, or VERBUM. Now, Mercury, besides being born
on Mount Cyllene among shepherds, is the patron of the

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

* By very few though, for the creators of the material universe
were always considered as subordinate gods to the Most High Deity.

** Lydus I., c. Ledrenus, I. c.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 542 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

latter. A psychopompic genius, he conducted the souls of the dead
to Hades and brought them back, an office attributed to Jesus,
after his death and resurrection. The symbols of Hermes-Mercury
(DiiTermini)were placed along and
at the turning points of highways (as crosses are now placed in
Italy) and they were cruciform.* Every seventh day the
priests anointed these termini with oil, and once a year
hung them with garlands, hence they were the anointed. Mercury,
when speaking through his oracles said, "I am he whom you
call the Son of the Father (Jupiter) and Maia. Leaving the King
of Heaven (the Sun) I come to help you, mortals." Mercury
heals the blind and restores sight, mental and physical.** He
was often represented as three-headed and called "Tricephalos,"
"Triplex," as one with the Sun and Venus. Finally, Mercury,
as Cornutus*** shows, was sometimes figured under a cubic form,
without arms, because "the power of speech and eloquence
can prevail without the assistance of arms or feet." It is
this cubic form which connects the termini directly with
the cross, and the eloquence or the power of speech of Mercury,
which made the crafty Eusebius say "Hermes is the emblem
of the Word which creates and interprets all," for it is
the creative word; and he shows Porphyry teaching that
the speech of Hermes, (now interpreted"Word ofGod" (!)in Pymander) a creative speech
(Verbum), is the seminal principle scattered
throughout the Universe.**** In Alchemy "Mercury" is
the radical Moyst, primitive or elementary water, containing
the seed of the Universe, fecundated by the solar fires. To express
this fecundating principle, a phallus was often added to the cross
(the male and female, or the vertical and the horizontal united)
by the Egyptians (Vide Egyptian Museums). The cruciform
termini also represented this dual idea, which was found
in Egypt in the cubic Hermes. The author of "Source
of Measures" tells us why. (But see the last page of §
XVI., about the Gnostic Priapus).

As shown by him, the cube unfolded becomes in display a cross
of the tau, or the Egyptian, form; or again, "the
circle attached to the tau gives the ansated cross"
of the old Pharaohs. They had known this from their priests and
their "Kings Initiates" for ages, and also what was
meant by "the attachment of a man to the cross," which
idea "was made to co-ordinate with that of the origin of
human life, and hence the phallic form." Only the
latter came into action aeons and ages after the idea of the carpenter
and artificer of the Gods,

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

*Montfaucon, Antiquities. See plates in Vol. I., plate
77. The disciples of Hermes go after their death to his planet,
Mercury -- their Kingdom of Heaven.

** Cornutus.

*** Lydus de Mensibus, iv.

**** Preparat, Evang. I. iii. ch. 2.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 543 A PERSONAL, IS A FINITE GOD.

Visvakarma, crucifying the "Sun-Initiate" on the cruciform
lathe. As the same author writes: "the attachment of
a man to the cross . . . was made use of in this very form
of display by the Hindus"; but, made "to co-ordinate"
with the idea of the new rebirth of man by spiritual,
not physical regeneration. The candidate for initiation was attached
to the tau or astronomical cross with a far grander and
nobler idea than that of the origin of mere terrestrial
life.

On the other hand, the Semites seem to have had no other or higher
purpose in life than that of procreating their species. Thus,
geometrically, and according to the reading of the Bible by means
of the numerical method, the author of the "Hebrew-Egyptian
Mystery" is quite correct. Their (the Jewish) entire
system --

"Seems to have been anciently regarded as one resting in
nature, and one which was adopted by nature, or God, as the basis
of law of the exertion practically of creative power -- i.e.,
it was the creative design, of which creation was practically
the application. This seems to be established by the fact that,
under the system set forth, measures of planetary times serve
coordinately as measures of the size of planets, and
of the peculiarity of their shapes -- i.e., in the extension
of their equatorial and polar diameters" . . . etc., etc.
(p. 3). . . . "This system seems to underlie the whole Biblical
structure (that of creative design), as a foundation for its ritualism
and for its display of the works of the Deity in the way
of architecture, by use of the sacred unit of measure
in the Garden of Eden, the Ark of Noah, the Tabernacle, and the
Temple of Solomon."

Thus, on the very showing of the defenders of this system the
Jewish Deity is proved to be, at best, only the manifested duad,
never the One absolute ALL. Geometrically demonstrated,
he is a NUMBER; symbolically, an euhemerized Priapus;
and this can hardly satisfy a mankind thirsting after the demonstration
of real spiritual truths, and the possession of a god with a divine,
not anthropomorphic, nature. It is strange that the most learned
of modem Kabalists can see in the cross and circle nothing but
a symbol of the manifested creative and androgyne
deity in its relation to, and interference with, this phenomenal
world.* One author believes that "man (read the Jew and Rabbi)
obtained knowledge of the practical measure . . . . by which nature
was thought to adjust the planets in size to harmonize with the
notation of their movements" . . . . and adds: "it seems
he did obtain it, and esteemed its possession as the means of
his realization of the Deity -- that is, he approached so
nearly to a conception of a Being having a mind like his own,
only infinitely more powerful, as to be able to realize a
law of creation

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

* See the Zohar and the two Qabbalahs (by Messrs. I.
Myer and Mathers), with interpretations, if the reader would satisfy
himself of this.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 544 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

established by that Being, which must have existed prior to any
creation (Kabalistically called the Word) "("Source of Measures," p. 5).

This may have satisfied the practical Semite mind, but
the Eastern Occultist has to decline the offer of such a
God; indeed, a Deity, a Being, "having a mind like that of
man, only infinitely more powerful," is no God that
has any room beyond the cycle of creation. He has nought
to do with the ideal conception of the eternal universe.
He is, at best, one of the creative subordinate powers,
the Totality of which is called the "Sephiroth," the
"Heavenly Man," and Adam Kadmon, the secondlogos of the Platonists.

This very same idea is clearly found at the bottom of the ablest
definitions of the Kabala and its mysteries, e.g., by
John A. Parker, as quoted in the same work: --

"The key of the Kabala is thought to be the geometrical
relation of the area ofthe circle inscribed in the square,
or, of the cube to the sphere, giving rise to the relation
of diameter to circumference of a circle with the numerical value
of this relation expressed in integrals. The relation of diameter
to circumference, being a supreme one connected with the god-names
of Elohim and Jehovah (which terms are expressions numerically
of these relations respectively, the first being of circumference,
the latter of diameter), embraces all. Two expressions of circumference
to diameter in integrals are used in the Bible: (1) The perfect,
and (2) the imperfect. One of the relations between these is such
that (2) subtracted from (1) will leave a unit of a diameter
value in terms, or in the denomination of the circumference value
of the perfect circle, or a unit straight line having a perfect
circular value, or a factor of circular value" (p. 22).

Such calculations can lead one no further than to unriddle the
mysteries of the third stage of Evolution, or the "third
creation of Brahma." The initiated Hindus know how to "square
the circle" far better than any European. But of this more
anon. The fact is that the Western Mystics commence their speculation
only at that stage when the universe "falls into matter,"
as the occultists say. Throughout the whole series of Kabalistic
books we have not met with one sentence that would hint in the
remotest way at the psychological and spiritual, as well as at
the mechanical and physiological secrets of "creation."
Shall we, then, regard the evolution of the Universe as simply
a prototype, on a gigantic scale, of the act of procreation? as
"divine" Phallicism, and rhapsodize on it as
the evilly-inspired author of a late work of this name has done?
The writer does not think so. And she feels justified in saying
so, since the most careful reading of the Old Testament -- esoterically,
as well as exoterically -- seems to have carried the most enthusiastic
enquirers no further than a certainty on mathematical grounds
that from the first to the last chapter of the Pentateuch
every scene, every character or event are shown connected,
directly or indirectly, with the origin of birth in its
crudest and most

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 545 A PLAGIARISM BY PASCAL.

brutal form. Thus, however interesting and ingenious the rabbinical
methods, the writer, in common with other Eastern Occultists,
must prefer those of the Pagans.

It is not, then, in the Bible that we have to search for the origin
of the Cross and Circle, but beyond the Flood. Therefore, returning
to Eliphas Levi and the Zohar, we answer for the Eastern Occultists
and say that, applying practice to principle, they agree entirely
with Pascal, who says that "God is a circle, the centre of
which is everywhere and the circumference nowhere," whereas
the Kabalists say the reverse, and maintain it solely out of their
desire to veil their doctrine. By the way, the definition of Deity
by the Circle is not Pascal's at all, as E. Levi thought. It was
borrowed by the French philosopher from either Mercury
Trismegistus or Cardinal Cusa's Latin work, De DoctaIgnorantia, in which he makes use of it. It is, moreover,
disfigured by Pascal, who replaces the words "Cosmic Circle,"
which stand symbolically in the original inscription, by the word
Theos. With the ancients both words were synonymous.

-------

A.

CROSS AND CIRCLE.

Something of the divine and the mysterious has ever been ascribed,
in the minds of the ancient philosophers, to the shape of the
circle. The old world, consistent in its symbolism with its pantheistic
intuitions, uniting the visible and the invisible Infinitudes
into one, represented Deity and its outward VEIL alike -- by a
circle. This merging of the two into a unity, and the name theos
given indifferently to both, is explained, and becomes thereby
still more scientific and philosophical. Plato's etymological
definition of the word theos has been shown elsewhere.
He derives it from the verb [[theein]] (see Cratylus),
"to move," as suggested by the motion of the heavenly
bodies which he connects with deity. According to the Esoteric
philosophy, this Deity is during its "nights"
and its "days" (i.e., cycles of rest or activity)
"the eternalperpetual motion," "the
EVER-BECOMING, as well as the ever universally present, and the
ever Existing." The latter is the root-abstraction, the former
-- the only possible conception in human mind, if it disconnects
this deity from any shape or form. It is a perpetual, never-ceasing
evolution, circling back in its incessant progress through aeons
of duration into its original status -- ABSOLUTE
UNITY.

It was only the minor gods, who were made to carry the symbolical
attributes of the higher ones. Thus, the god Shoo, the
personification of Ra, who appears as "the great
Cat of the Basin of Persea, in An"

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 546 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

(See "Book of the Dead," Ritual XVII,
45-47), was often represented in the Egyptian monuments seated,
and holding a cross, symbol of the four quarters, or the Elements,
attached to a Circle.

In that very learned work, "The Natural Genesis," by
Mr. Gerald Massey, on pp. 408-455 (Vol. I.), under the heading,
"Typology of the Cross," there is more information to
be had on the cross and circle than in any other work we know
of. He who would fain have proofs of the antiquity of the Cross
is referred to these two volumes. The author shows that "the
circle and the cross are inseparable. . . . The crux ansata unites
the circle and cross of the four corners. From this origin they
came to be interchangeable at times. For example, the Chakra,
or Disk of Vishnu, is a circle. The names denote the circling,
wheeling round, periodicity, the wheel of time. This the god uses
as a weapon to hurl at the enemy. In like manner, Thor throws
his weapon, the Fylfot, a form of the four-footed cross (Swastica)
and a type of the four quarters. Thus the cross is equivalent
to the circle of the year. . . . The wheel emblem unites the cross
and circle in one, as does the hieroglyphic cake and the Ankh-te
."

Nor was the double glyph sacred with the profane, but only with
the Initiates. For Raoul-Rochette shows (ibid)"the
sign , occurring as the
reverse of a Phoenician coin, with a Ram as the obverse.
. . . .The same sign, sometimes called Venus' Looking-Glass, because
it typified reproduction, was employed to mark the hind-quarters
of valuable brood mares of Corinthian and other beautiful breeds
of horses" (Raoul-Rochette, loc. cit. De La Croix Ansee,
Mem. de l'Academie desSciences, pl.2,
Nos. 8, 9, also 16, 2, p. 320, quoted in "Nat. Gen."),
which proves that so far back as those early days the cross had
already become the symbol of human procreation, and that oblivion
of the divine origin of Cross and Circle had been forgotten.

Another form of the cross is given from the Journal of the
RoyalAsiatic Society (vol. xviii., p. 393, pl.
4): --

"At each of the four corners is placed a quarter arc of an
oviform curve, and when the four are put together they form an
oval; thus the figure combines the cross with the circle round
in four parts, corresponding to the four corners of the cross.
The four segments answer to the four feet of the Swastica cross
and the Fylfot of Thor. The four-leaved lotus flower of Buddha,
is likewise figured at the centre of this cross, the lotus being
an Egyptian and Hindu type of the four quarters. The four quarter
arcs, if joined together, would form an ellipse, and the ellipse
is also figured on each arm of the cross. This ellipse therefore
denotes the path of the earth . . . . Sir J. Y. Simpson copied
the following specimen ,
which is here presented, as the cross of the two equinoxes and
the two solstices placed within the figure of the earth's path.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 547 VARIATIONS OF THE SYMBOLISM.

The same ovoid or boat-shaped figure appears at times in the Hindu
drawings with seven steps at each end as a form or a mode of Meru."

This is the astronomical aspect of the double glyph. There are
six more aspects, however, and an attempt may be made to interpret
a few of these. The subject is so vast that it would require in
itself alone many volumes.

But the most curious of these Egyptian symbols of Cross and Circle,
spoken of in the above cited work, is one which receives its full
explanation and final colour from Aryan symbols of the same nature.
Says the author: --

"The four-armed Cross is simply the cross of the four quarters,
but the cross sign is not always simple.* This is a type that
was developed from an identifiable beginning, which was adapted
to the expression of various ideas afterwards. The most sacred
cross of Egypt that was carried in the hands of the gods, the
Pharaohs, and the mummied dead, is the Ankh
the sign of life, the living, an oath, the covenant . . . The
top of this is the hieroglyphic Ru
set upright on the Tau-Cross. The Ru is the door, gate, mouth,
the place of outlet. This denotes the birth-place in
the northern quarter of the heavens, from which the Sun is reborn.
Hence the Ru of the Ankh sign is thefeminine type
of the birth-place, representing the north. It was in the
NORTHERN QUARTER that the GODDESS
OF THE SEVEN STARS, called the
"Mother of the Revolutions," gave birth to time in the
earliest cycle of the year. The first sign of this primordial
circle and cycle made in heaven is the earliest shape of the Ankh-cross
, a mere loop which contains
both a circle and the cross in one image. This loop or noose is
carried in front of the oldest genitrix,Typhon of
the great Bear, as her Ark, the ideograph of
a period, an ending, a time, shown to mean one revolution.

"This then represents the circle made in the northern heaven
by the Great Bear, which constituted the earliest year of time,
from which we infer that the loop or Ru of the North represents
that quarter, the birth-place of time when figured as the Ru of
the Ankh symbol. Indeed this can be proved. The noose is an Ark
or Rak type of reckoning. The Ru of the Ankh-cross was continued
in the Cypriote and the
Coptic Ro, P.** The Ro, was carried into the Greek cross ,
which is formed of the Ro and Chi or R-K. . . . The Rak, or Ank,
was the sign of all beginning (Arche) on this account,
and the Ank-tie is the cross of the North, the hind part of Heaven.
. . ."

Now this, again, is entirely astronomical and phallic. The Puranic
version in India gives the whole another colour; and without,
however,

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

*Certainly not; for very often there are symbols made to symbolize
other symbols, and these are in turn used in ideographs.

** The R of the Slavonian and Russian alphabets (the Kyriletza)
is also the Latin P.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 548 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

destroying the above interpretation it is made to reveal a portion
of its mysteries with the help of the astronomical key, and thus
offers a more metaphysical rendering. The "Ankh-tie"
does not belong to Egypt
alone. It exists under the name of pasa, a cord which Siva holds
in the hand of his right back arm* (Siva having four arms). The
Mahadeva is represented in the posture of an ascetic, as Maha-Yogi,
with his third eye , which
is "the Ru, ,set upright
on the Tau-Cross" in another form. The pasa is held in the
hand in such a way that it is the first finger and hand near the
thumb which make the cross, or loop and crossing.
Our Orientalists would have it to represent a cord to bind refractory
offenders with, because, forsooth, Kali, Siva's consort, has the
same as an attribute!

The pasa has here a double significance, as also has
Siva's trisula and every other divine attribute. This
significance lies in Siva, as Rudra has certainly the same meaning
as the Egyptian ansated cross in its cosmic and mystic meaning.
In the hand of Siva it becomes linga and yonic. That
which is meant is this: Siva, as said before, is unknown by that
name in the Vedas; and it is in the white Yajur Veda
that he appears for the first time as the great god -- MAHADEVA
-- whose symbol is the lingham. In Rig Veda he is called Rudra,
the "howler," the beneficent and the maleficent Deity
at the same time, the Healer and the Destroyer. In the Vishnu
Purana, he is the god who springs from the forehead of Brahma,
who separates into male and female, and he is the parent of the
Rudras or Maruts, half of whom are brilliant and gentle, others,
black and ferocious. In the Vedas, he is the divine Ego aspiring
to return to its pure, deific state, and at the same time that
divine ego imprisoned in earthly form, whose fierce passions make
of him the "roarer," the "terrible." This
is well shown in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, wherein the Rudras,
the progeny of Rudra, god of fire, are called the "ten vital
breaths" (prana, life) with manas, as eleventh,
whereas as Siva, he is the Destroyer of that life. Brahma
calls him Rudra, and gives him, besides, seven other names, which
names are his seven forms of manifestation, also the seven powers
of nature which destroy but to recreate or regenerate.

Hence the cruciform noose (pasa)in his hand,
when he is represented as an ascetic, the Mahayogin, has
no phallic signification, and it, indeed, requires a strong imagination
bent in this direction to find such even in

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

* See Moor's "Hindu Pantheon," plate xiii.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 549 "GUHA," THE MYSTERIOUS.

an astronomical symbol. As an emblem of "door, gate, mouth,
the place of outlet" it signifies the "strait gate"
that leads to the kingdom of heaven, far more than the "birth-place"
in a physiological sense.

It is a Cross in a Circle and Crux Ansata, truly;
but it is a Cross on which all the human passions have to be crucified
before the Yogi passes through the "strait gate," the
narrow circle that widens into an infinite one, as soon as the
inner man has passed the threshold.

As to the mysterious constellation of the Seven Rishis in the
great Bear, if Egypt made them sacred to "the oldest genitrix,
Typhon" -- India has connected all these symbols ages ago
with time or Yuga revolutions, and the Saptarishis are
intimately connected with our present age -- the Dark Kali
Yug.* The great Circle of Time, on the face of which fancy
in India has represented the Tortoise (Kurma, or Sisumara, one
of the Avatars of Vishnu), has the Cross placed on it by nature
in its division and localisation of stars, planets and constellations.
Thus in Bhagavata Purana V., xxx., it is said that "at
the extremity of the tail of that animal, whose head is directed
toward theSouth and whose body is in the shape
of a ring (Circle), Dhruva (the ex-pole star) is placed;
and along that tail are the Prajapati, Agni, Indra, Dharma,
etc.; and across its loins the Seven Rishis." This
is then the first and earliest Cross and Circle, into the formation
of which enters the Deity (symbolized by Vishnu), the Eternal
Circle of Boundless Time, Kala, on whose plane lie crossways
all the gods, creatures, and creations born in Space and Time;
-- who, as the philosophy has it, all die at the Mahapralaya.

Meanwhile it is they, the Seven Rishis, who mark the time and
the duration of events in our septenary life cycle. They are as
mysterious as their supposed wives, the Pleiades, of whom only
one -- she who hides -- has proven virtuous. The Pleiades (Krittika)
are the nurses of Karttikeya, the God of War (Mars of the Western
Pagans), who is called the Commander of the celestial armies --
or rather of the Siddhas (translated Yogis in heaven, and holy
sages on the earth) -- "Siddha-sena," which would make
Karttikeya identical with Michael, the "leader of the celestial
hosts" and, like himself, a virgin Kumara.** Verily
he is the "Guha," the mysterious one, as much
so as are the Saptarshis and the Krittika (seven Rishis and the
Pleiades), for the interpretation of all these combined, reveal
to the adept the greatest mysteries of occult nature. One point
is worth mention in this question of cross and

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

* Described in the "Mission des Juifs" by the
Marquis St. Yves d'Alveydre, the hierophant and leader of
a large party of French Kabalists, as the Golden Age!

** The more so since he is the reputed slayer of Tripurasura and
the Titan Taraka. Michael is the conqueror of the dragon, and
Indra and Karttikeya are often made identical.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 550 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

circle, as it bears strongly upon the elements of fire and water,
which play such an important part in the circle and cross Symbolics.
Like Mars, who is alleged by Ovid to have been born of a mother
alone (Juno), without the participation of a father, or like the
Avatars (Krishna, for instance), in the West as in the East --
Karttikeya is born, but in a still more miraculous manner -- begotten
by neither father nor mother, but out of a seed of Rudra Siva,
viaAgni, who dropped it into the Ganges. Thus
he is born from fire and water -- a "boy bright
as the Sun and beautiful as the moon." Hence he is called
Agnibhuva (Agni's son) and Ganga-putra (Son
of Ganges). Add to this the fact that the Krittika, his nurses,
as Matsya Purana shows, are presided over by Agni, or, in the
authentic words -- "The seven Rishis are on a line with the
brilliant Agni," and hence are called Agneya -- and the connection
is easy to follow.

It is, then, the Rishis who mark the time and the periods of Kali-yuga,
the age of sin and sorrow. See in the Bhagavata Purana XII.,
II, 2, 6, 32, and Vishnu Purana. Says the latter: "When
the splendour of Vishnu (Krishna) departed for heaven, then did
the Kali Yug, during which men delight in sin, invade the world.
. . . . When the Seven Rishis were in Magha, the Kali Yug, comprising
1,200 (divine) years (432,000 years of mortals), began; and when
from Magha, they shall reach Purvashadha, then will this Kali
age attain its growth, under Nanda and his successors."*
This is the revolution of the Rishis "when the two first
stars of the Seven Rishis (of the Great Bear) rise in the heavens,
and some lunar asterism is seen at night, at an equal distance
between them, then the Seven Rishis continue stationary in that
conjunction for a hundred years," a hater of Nanda makes
Parasara say. According to Bentley, it is in order to show the
quantity of the precession of the equinoxes that this notion originated
among the astronomers. It was done "by assuming an imaginary
line, or great circle, passing through the poles of the ecliptic
and the beginning of the fixed Magha, which circle was supposed
to cut some of the stars in the Great Bear. . . . The seven stars
being called the Rishis, the Circle so assumed was called the
line of the Rishis . . . . and being invariably fixed to the beginning
of the lunar asterism Magha, the precession would be noted by
stating the degree . . . of any moveable lunar mansion cut by
that line or circle as an index" ("Historical View of
the Hindu Astronomy," p. 65).

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

* Nanda is the first Buddhist Sovereign, Chandragupta, against
whom all the Brahmins were so arrayed; he of the Morya Dynasty,
and the grandfather of Asoka. This is one of those passages that
do not exist in the earlier Puranic MSS. They
were added by the Vaishnavas, who interpolated almost as much,
out of Sectarian spite, as the Christian Fathers did.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 551 THE RISHIS AND THE PLEIADES.

There was, and still exists, a seemingly endless controversy about
the chronology of the Hindus. Here is a point that could help
to determine -- approximately at least -- the age when the symbolism
of the Seven Rishis and their connection with the Pleiades began.
When Karttikeya was delivered to them by the gods to be nursed,
the Krittika were only six -- whence Karttikeya is represented
with six heads; but when the poetical fancy of the early
Aryan symbologists made of them the consorts of the Seven Rishis,
they were seven. Their names are given, and these are
Amba, Dula, Nitatui, Abrayanti, Maghayanti, Varshayanti, and Chupunika.
There are other sets of names which differ, however. Anyhow, the
Seven Rishis were made to marry the Seven Krittika before the
disappearance of the seventh Pleiad. Otherwise, how could the
Hindu astronomers speak of that which, without the help of the
strongest telescopes, no one can see? This is why, perhaps, in
every such case the majority of the events described in the Hindu
allegories is fixed upon as "a very recent invention, certainly
within the Christian era"?

The oldest MSS. in Sanskrit on astronomy, begin
their series of Nakshatras (the 27 lunar asterisms) with
the sign of Krittika, and this can hardly make them earlier
than 2780 B.C., (see the "Vedic Calendar,"
accepted even by the Orientalists); though they get out of the
difficulty by saying that the said Calendar does not prove
that the Hindus knew anything of astronomy at that date, and assure
their readers that, Calendars notwithstanding, the Indian pundits
may have acquired their knowledge of the lunar mansions headed
by Krittika from the Phoenicians, etc. However that may be, the
Pleiades are the central group of the system of sidereal symbology.
They are situated in the neck of the constellation of Taurus,
regarded by Madler and others, in astronomy, asthe central group of the system of The Milky Way, and
in the Kabala and Eastern Esotericism, as the sidereal septenate
born from the first manifested side of the upper triangle,
the concealed . This manifested
side is Taurus, the Symbol of ONE (the
figure 1), or of the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, Aleph (bull or ox) whose synthesis
is ten (10), or Yodh,
the perfect letter and number. The Pleiades (Alcyone, especially),
are thus considered, even in astronomy, as the central point around
which our Universe of fixed stars revolves, the focus
from which, and into which the divine breath, MOTION,
works incessantly during the Manvantara. Hence -- in the Occult
philosophy and its sidereal symbols -- it is this Circle and the
starry cross on its face, which play the most prominent part.

The Secret Doctrine teaches us that everything in the universe,
as well as the universe itself, is formed (created) during its
periodical manifestations -- by accelerated MOTION
set into activity by the BREATH of

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 552 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

the ever-to-be-unknown power (unknown to present mankind, at any
rate) within the phenomenal world. The Spirit of Life and Immortality
was everywhere symbolized by a circle: hence the serpent biting
his tail, represents the circle of Wisdom in infinity; as does
the astronomical cross -- the cross within a circle, and the globe,
with two wings added to it, which then became the sacred Scarabaeus
of the Egyptians, its very name being suggestive of the secret
idea attached to it. For the Scarabaeus is called in Egypt (in
the papyri) Khopirron and Khopri from
the verb Khopron "to become," and has thus
been made a symbol and an emblem of human life and of the successive
becomings of man, through the various peregrinations
and metempsychoses (reincarnations) of the liberated Soul. This
mystical symbol shows plainly that the Egyptians believed in reincarnation
and the successive lives and existences of the Immortal entity.
Being, however, an esoteric doctrine, revealed only during the
mysteries by the priest-hierophants and the Kings-Initiates to
the candidates, it was kept secret. The incorporeal intelligences
(the Planetary Spirits, or Creative Powers) were always represented
under the form of circles. In the primitive philosophy of the
Hierophants these invisible circles were the prototypic
causes and builders of all the heavenly orbs, which were their
visible bodies or coverings, and of which they were the
souls. It was certainly a universal teaching in antiquity. (See
Ezekiel, ch. 1.)

"Before the mathematical numbers," says Proclus (in
Quinto Libro,EUCLID), "there are the
Self-moving numbers; before the figures apparent -- the
vital figures, and before producing the material worlds which
movein a Circle, the Creative Power produced the
invisible Circles."

Deus enim et circulus est, says Pherecydes, in his hymn
to Jupiter. It was a Hermetic axiom, and Pythagoras prescribed
such a circular prostration and posture during the hours of contemplation.
"The devotee must approach as much as possible the form of
a perfect circle," prescribes the Secret Book. Numa tried
to spread among the people the same custom, Pierius* tells his
readers; and Pliny says: "During our worship, we roll up,
so to say, our body in a ring, totumcorpus circumagimur."**
The vision of the prophet Ezekiel reminds one

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

*Pierius Vale.

** The goddess Basht (or Pasht) was represented with the head
of a cat. This animal was sacred in Egypt for several reasons:
as a symbol of the Moon "the eye of Osiris" or the "Sun,"
during night. The cat was also sacred to Sokhit. One of the mystic
reasons was because of its body being rolled up in a circle
when asleep. The posture is prescribed for occult and magnetic
purposes, in order to regulate in a certain way the circulation
of the vital fluid, with which the cat is pre-eminently endowed.
"The nine lives of a cat" is a popular saying based
on good physiological and occult reasons. Mr. G. Massey gives
also an astronomical reason for it which may be found in §
I. "SYMBOLISM." "The cat saw the
Sun, had it in its eye by night (was the eye [[footnote continued
on following page]]

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 553 THE DEGRADATION OF THE SYMBOL.

forcibly of this mysticism of the circle, when he beheld a whirl-wind
from which came out "one wheel upon the earth"
whose work "was as it were a wheel in the middle
of a wheel" (ch. i. vv. 4-16). . . . "for the
Spirit of the living creature was in the wheels"
(v. 20).

"Spirit whirleth about continually and returneth
again according to his circuits" -- says Solomon (Eccles.
i. 6), who is made in the English translation to
speak of the "Wind," and in the original text to
refer both to the Spirit and the Sun. But the
Zohar, the only true glossary of the Kabalistic Preacher,
in explanation of this verse, which is, perhaps, rather hazy
and difficult to comprehend, says that "it seems to say that
the sun moves in circuits, whereas it refers to the Spirit under
theSun, called the holy Spirit, that moves circularly,
toward both sides, that they (It and the Sun) should be united
in the same Essence." . . . (Zohar, fol. 87,
col. 346.)

The Brahmanical "Golden Egg," from within which emerges
Brahma, the creative deity, is the "circle with the Central
Point" of Pythagoras, and its fitting symbol. In the Secret
Doctrine the concealed UNITY -- whether representing
PARABRAHMAM, or the "GREAT
EXTREME" of Confucius, or the Deity concealed
by PHTA, the Eternal Light, or again the Jewish
EN-SOPH, is always found to
be symbolized by a circle or the "nought" (absolute
No-Thing and Nothing, because it is infinite and
the ALL); while the god-manifested (by its works)
is referred to as the diameter of that circle. The symbolism
of the underlying idea is thus made evident: the right line passing
through the centre of a circle has, in the geometrical sense,
length, but neither breadth or thickness: it is an imaginary and
feminine symbol, crossing eternity and made to rest on the plane
of existence of the phenomenalworld. It is
dimensional, whereas its circle is dimensionless, or,
to use an algebraical term, it is the dimension of an equation.
Another way of symbolizing the idea is found in the Pythagorean
sacred Decade which synthesizes, in the dual numeral
Ten (the 1 and a circle or cipher), the absolute ALL
manifesting itself in the WORD or generative
Power of Creation.

-------

B.

THE FALL OF THE CROSS
INTO MATTER.

Those who would feel inclined to argue upon this Pythagorean symbol
by objecting that it is not yet ascertained, so far, at what period
of

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

[[Footnote continued from previous page]] of night), when it was
otherwise unseen by men (for as the moon reflects the light of
the Sun, so the cat was supposed to reflect it on account of its
phosphorescent eyes) . . . We might say the moon mirrored
the solar light, because we have looking-glasses. With
them the cat's eye was the mirror."

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 554 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

antiquity the nought or cipher occurs for the first time
-- especially in India -- are referred to Vol. II.
of "Isis Unveiled," pp. 299, 300, et seq.

Admitting for argument's sake that the ancient world was not acquainted
with our modes of calculation or Arabic figures -- though we know
it was -- yet the circle and diameter idea is
there to show that it was the first symbol in cosmogony.
Before the trigrammes of Fo-hi, Yang, the Unity,
and Yin, the binary , explained cunningly enough by Eliphas
Levi thus (Dogme et Rituel, Vol. I., p. 124): -- China
had her Confucius, and her Tau-ists.* The former circumscribes
the "great extreme" within a circle with a horizontal
line across; the latter place three concentric circles beneath
the great circle, while the Sung Sages showed the "great
Extreme" in an upper circle, and Heaven and Earth in two
lower and smaller circles. The Yangs and the Yins
are a far later invention.

Plato and his school never understood the Deity otherwise, many
epithets of his applied to the "God over all" ([[ho
epi pasi theos]]) notwithstanding. Plato having been initiated,
could not believe in a personal God -- a gigantic Shadow of Man.
His epithets of "monarch" and "Law-giver of the
Universe" bear an abstract meaning well understood by every
Occultist, who, no less than any Christian, believes in the One
Law that governs the Universe, recognizing it at the same time
as immutable. "Beyond all finite existences,"
he says, "and secondary causes, all laws, ideas
and principles, there is an INTELLIGENCE or MIND
([[nous]]), the first principle of all principles, the
Supreme Idea on which all other ideas are grounded . . . the
ultimate substance from which all things derive their
being and essence, the first and efficient cause of all the
order, and harmony, and beauty and excellency, and goodness, which
pervades the Universe" -- who is called, by way of preeminence
and excellence, the Supreme** good "the god" ([[Theos]]),
and "the god over all." These words apply, as Plato
himself shows, neither to the "Creator" nor to the "Father"
of our modern Monotheist, but to the ideal and abstract
cause. For, as he says, "this [gk char], the god over all,
is not the truth or the intelligence, but the FATHER
of it," and its Primal cause. Is it Plato, the greatest pupil
of the archaic Sages, a sage himself, for whom there was but a
single object of attainment in this life -- REAL
KNOWLEDGE -- who would have ever believed in
a deity that curses and damns men for ever, on the slightest provocation?***
Not he, who considered only those to be

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

*Also in T'sang-t-ung-ky, by Wei-Pa-Yang.

** Cocker's "Christianity and Greek Philosophy," xi.,
p. 377.

*** The cry of despair uttered by Count de Montlosier in his Mysteres
de la VieHumaine, p. 117, is a warrant that the
Cause of "excellence and goodness," supposed by Plato
to pervade the Universe is neither his Deity, nor our
World. "Au spectacle de tant [[footnote continued on
next page]]

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 555 THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION.

genuine philosophers and students of truth who possessed the knowledge
of the really existing in opposition to mere seeming;
of the always existing in opposition to the transitory;
and of that which exists permanently in opposition to
that which waxes, wanes, and is developed and destroyed alternately.*
Speusippus and Xenocrates followed in his footsteps. The ONE,
the original, had no existence, in the sense applied to it by
mortal men. "The [[timion]](honoured
one) dwells in the centre as in the circumference, but it
is only the reflectionof theDeity --
the world Soul"** -- the plane of the surface of the circle.
The Cross and Circle are a universal conception -- as old as human
mind itself. They stand foremost on the list of the long series
of, so to say, international symbols, which expressed very often
great scientific truths, besides their direct bearing upon psychological,
and even physiological mysteries; and this symbol is precisely
one of this kind, and is based upon the oldest esoteric cosmogony.

It is no explanation to say, as Eliphas Levi does, that God, the
universal Love, having caused the male unit to dig an
abyss in the female Binary, or chaos, produced thereby
the world. Besides being as gross a conception as any, it does
not remove the difficulty of conceiving it without losing one's
veneration for the rather too human-like ways of the Deity. It
is to avoid such anthropomorphic conceptions that the Initiates
never use the epithet "God" to designate the One and
Secondless Principle in the Universe; and that -- faithful in
this to the oldest traditions of the Secret Doctrine the world
over -- they deny that such imperfect and often not very clean
work could ever be produced by Absolute Perfection. There is no
need to mention here other still greater metaphysical difficulties.
Between speculative Atheism and idiotic anthropomorphism there
must be a philosophical mean, and a reconciliation. The Presence
of the Unseen Principle throughout all nature, and the highest
manifestation of it on Earth -- MAN, can alone help to solve the
Problem, which is that of the mathematician whose x must
ever elude the grasp of our terrestrial algebra. The Hindus have
tried to solve it by their avatars, the Christians think

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

[[Continued from previous page]] de grandeur oppose a celui de
tant de misere, l'esprit qui se met a observer ce vaste ensemble,
se represente je ne sais quelle grande diviniti qu'une diviniti,
plusgrande et plus pressante encore, aurait comme
brisee et mise en pieces en dispersant les debris dans tout l'Univers."
The "still greater and still more exacting divinity"
than the god of this world, supposed so "good" -- is
KARMA. And this true Divinity shows well that
the lesser one, our inner God (personal for the time
being), has no power to arrest the mighty hand of this greater
Deity, the CAUSE awakened by our actions generating
smaller causes, which is called the LAW OF RETRIBUTION.

* See "Isis Unveiled," Before the Veil, xii.
(Vol. I.).

** Plato: "Parmenides," 141, E.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 556 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

they did it -- by their one divine Incarnation. Exoterically --
both are wrong; esoterically both of them are very near
the truth. Alone, among the Apostles of the Western religion,
Paul seems to have fathomed -- if not actually revealed -- the
archaic mystery of the Cross. As for the rest of those who, by
unifying and individualizing the Universal Presence, have thus
synthesized it into one symbol -- the central Point in the Crucifix
-- they have shown thereby that they have never seized the true
Spirit of the teaching of Christ, and by their interpretations
they have degraded it in more than one way. They have forgotten
the Spirit of that universal symbol and have selfishly monopolized
it -- as though the Boundless and the Infinite can ever be limited
and conditioned to one manifestation individualized in one man,
or even in a nation!

The four arms of the ","
the decussated cross, and of the "Hermetic," pointing
to the four cardinal points -- were well understood by the mystical
minds of the Hindus, Brahmins and Buddhists, thousands of years
before it was heard of in Europe; and that symbol was and is found
all over the world. They bent the ends of that cross and made
of it their Swastica
now the Wan of the Buddhist Mongolian.* It implies that
the "Central point" is not limited to one individual,
however perfect. That the Principle (God) is in Humanity,
and Humanity, as all the rest, is in it, like drops of water are
in the Ocean, the four ends being toward the four cardinal points,
hence losing themselves in infinity.

Isarim, an Initiate, is said to have found at Hebron, on the
deadbody of Hermes, the well known Smaragdine
tablet, which, it is said, contained the essence of Hermetic
wisdom . . . . "Separate the earth from the fire, the subtile
from the gross . . . . Ascend from the earth to heaven and then
descend again to earth" was traced on it. The riddle
of the cross is contained in these words, and its double mystery
is solved -- to the Occultist.

"The philosophical cross, the two lines running in opposite
directions, the horizontal and the perpendicular, the height and
breadth, which the geometrizing Deity divides at the intersecting
point, and which forms the magical as well as the scientific quaternary,
when it is inscribed within the perfect square, is the basis of
the occultist. Within its mystical precinct lies the master-key
which opens the door of every science, physical as well as spiritual.
It symbolizes our human existence, for the circle of life circum-

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

* The Swastica is certainly one of the oldest
symbols of the Ancient Races. In our century, says Kenneth R.
H. Mackenzie (Royal Masonic Cyclopeadia)it
(the Swastica) "has survived in the form of the mallet"
in the Masonic Fraternity. Among the many "meanings"
the author gives of it, we do not find, however, the most important
one, masons evidently not knowing it.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 557 THE PRIMITIVE CROSS

scribes the four points of the cross, which represent in succession
birth, life, death, and IMMORTALITY.

" 'Attach thyself,' say the alchemists, 'to the four letters
of the tetragram disposed in the following manner: The letters
of the ineffable name are there, although thou mayest not discern
them at first. The incommunicable axiom is kabalistically contained
therein, and this is what is called the magic arcanum by the masters.'
" ("Isis Unveiled.")

Again: -- The (Tau), and
the astronomical cross of Egypt
are conspicuous in several apertures of the remains of Palenque.
In one of the basso-relievos of the Palace of Palenque,
on the west side, sculptured as a hieroglyphic right under the
seated figure, is a Tau. The standing figure, which leans
over the first one, is in the act of covering its head with the
left hand with the veil of initiation; while it extends its right
with the index and middle finger pointing to heaven. The position
is precisely that of a Christian bishop giving his blessing, or
the one in which Jesus is often represented while at the Last
Supper. . . . The Egyptian Hierophant had a square head-dress
which he had to wear always during his functions. . . . The perfect
Tau, formed of the perpendicular (descending male ray),
and a horizontal line (matter, female principle), and the mundane
circle was an attribute of Isis, and it is but at death that the
Egyptian cross was laid on the breast of the mummy." These
square hats are worn unto this day by the Armenian priests. The
claim that the cross is purely a Christian symbol introduced after
our era, is strange indeed, when we find Ezekiel stamping the
foreheads of the men of Judah, who feared the Lord (Ezekiel
ix. 4), with the signumThau, as it is
translated in the Vulgate. In the ancient Hebrew this sign was
formed thus , but in the
original Egyptian hieroglyphics as a perfect Christian cross
(Tat, the emblem
of stability). In the Revelation, also, the "Alpha
and Omega" (spirit and matter), the first and the last, stamps
the name of his Father in the foreheads of the elect, (p.
323, Vol. II.) Moses, in Exodus
xii. 22, orders his people to mark their door-posts
and lintels with blood, lest the "Lord God" should
make a mistake and smite some of his chosen people, instead of
the doomed Egyptians. And this mark is a tau! The identical Egyptian
handled cross, with the half of which talisman Horus
raised the dead, as is shown on a sculptured ruin at Philoe.

Enough was said in the text about the Swastica and the
Tau. Verily may the Cross be traced back into the very
depths of the unfathomable Archaic Ages! Its Mystery deepens rather
than clears, as we find it on the statues of Easter Island --
in old Egypt, in Central Asia, engraved on rocks as Tau and Swastica,
in pre-Christian Scandinavia,

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 558 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

everywhere! The author of the "Hebrew Egyptian Mystery"
stands perplexed before the endless shadow it throws back into
antiquity, and is unable to trace it to any particular nation
or man. He shows the Targums handed down by the Hebrews,
obscured by translation. In Joshua (viii. 29) read in Arabic,
and in the Targum of Jonathan, it is said:
"The king of Ai he crucified upon a tree." The
Septuagint rendering is of suspension from a double word
(Wordsworth on Joshua.) . . . The strangest expression of
this kind is in Numbers xxv. 4, where, by Onkalos (?) it is read:
"Crucify them before the Lord (Jehovah) against the Sun."
"The word here ,
to nail to, is rendered properly (Fuerst) by the Vulgate
to crucify. The very construction of this sentence is
mystic."

So it is, but the spirit of it has been ever misunderstood. "To
crucify before (not against) the sun" is a phrase used of
initiation. It comes from Egypt, and primarily from India. The
enigma can be unriddled only by searching for its key in the Mysteries
of Initiation. The initiated adept, who had successfully passed
through all the trials, was attached, not nailed,
but simply tied on a couch in the form of a tau (in Egypt) of a Svastika
without the four additional prolongations (thus: ,
not ) plunged in a deep
sleep (the "Sleep of Siloam" it is called to this day
among the Initiates in Asia Minor, in Syria, and even higher Egypt).
He was allowed to remain in this state for three days and three
nights, during which time his Spiritual Ego was said to confabulate
with the "gods," descend into Hades, Amenti, or Patala,
(according to the country), and do works of charity to the invisible
beings, whether souls of men or Elemental Spirits; his body remaining
all the time in a temple crypt or subterranean cave. In Egypt
it was placed in the Sarcophagus in the King's Chamber of the
Pyramid of Cheops, and carried during the night of the approaching
third day to the entrance of a gallery, where at a certain hour
the beams of the rising Sun struck full on the face of the entranced
candidate, who awoke to be initiated by Osiris, and Thoth the
God of Wisdom.

Let the reader who doubts the statement consult the Hebrew originals
before he denies. Let him turn to some most suggestive Egyptian
basreliefs. One especially from the temple
of Philoe, represents a scene ofinitiation. Two
Gods-Hierophants, one with the head of a hawk (the Sun), the other
ibis-headed (Mercury, Thoth, the god of Wisdom and secret
learning, the assessor of Osiris-Sun), are standing over the body
of a candidate just initiated. They are in the act of pouring
on his head a double stream of water (the water of life and new
birth), which stream is interlaced in the shape
of a cross and full of small ansated crosses. This is allegorical
of the awakening of the candidate

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 559 ITS EARLY SIGNIFICANCE.

(now an Initiate), when the beams of the morning sun (Osiris)
strike the crown of his head (his entranced body being placed
on its wooden tau so as to receive the rays).
Then appeared the Hierophants-Initiators, and the sacramental
words were pronounced, ostensibly, to the Sun-Osiris, addressed
in reality to the Spirit Sun within, enlightening the newly-born
man. Let the reader meditate on the connection of the Sun with
the Cross in both its generative and spiritually regenerative
capacities -- from the highest antiquity. Let him examine the
tomb of Bait-Oxly, in the reign of Ramses II.,
where he will find the crosses in every shape and position. So
again, on the throne of that sovereign, and finally on a fragment
from the Hall of the ancestors of Totmes III.,
preserved in the National Library of Paris, which represents the
adoration of Bakhan-Aleare.

In this extraordinary sculpture and painting one sees the disc
of the Sun beaming upon an ansated cross placed upon a cross of
which those of the Calvary were perfect copies. The ancient MSS.
mention these as the "hard couches of those who were in (spiritual)
travail, the actof giving birth to themselves."A quantity of such cruciform "couches," on which
the candidate, thrown into a dead trance at the end of his supreme
initiation, was placed and secured, were found in the underground
halls of the Egyptian temples after their destruction. The worthy
and holy Fathers of the Cyril and Theophilus types used them freely,
believing they had been brought and concealed there by some new
converts. Alone Origen, and after him Clemens Alexandrinus and
other ex-initiates, knew better. But they preferred to keep silent.

Again, let the reader read the Hindu "fables," as the
Orientalists call them, and remember the allegory of Visvakarma,
the creative power, the great architect of the world, called in
the Veda "the all-seeing god," who "sacrifices
himself to himself" (the Spiritual Egos of mortals are his
own essence, one with him, therefore). Remember that
he is called Deva Vardhika "the builder of the gods"
and that it is he who ties (the Sun) Surya, his son-in-law, on
his lathe, in the exoteric allegory; on the Swastika, in esoteric
tradition, as on earth he is the Hierophant Initiator, and cuts
away a portion of his brightness. Visvakarma, remember again,
is the Son of Yoga-Siddha, i.e., the holy power of Yoga,
and the fabricator of the "fiery weapon," the magic
Agneyastra. The narrative is given more fully elsewhere. The author
of the Kabalistic work so often quoted from, asks: --

"The theoretical use of crucifixion must have been somehow
connected with the personification of this symbol (the structure
of the garden of Paradise symbolized by a crucified man). But
how? And as showing what? The symbol was of the origin of measures,
shadowing forth creative law or design. What
practically, as regards humanity,

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 560 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

could actual crucifixion betoken? Yet, that it was held as the
effigy of some mysterious working of the same system, is shown
from the very fact of the use. There seems to be deep below deep
as to the mysterious workings of these number values -- (the symbolization
of the connection of 113 : 355, with 20612 : 6561, by a crucified
man). Not only are they shown to work in the Kosmos
. . . . but by sympathy, they seem to work out conditions relating
to an unseen and spiritual world, and the prophets seem to have
held knowledge of the connecting link. . . . Reflection becomes
more involved when it is considered that the power of expression
of the law, exactly, by numbers, clearly defining
a system, was not the accident of the language, but was
its very essence, and of its primary organic construction;
therefore, neither the language, nor the mathematical system
attaching to it, could be of man's invention, unless
both were founded upon a prior language, which afterwards
becameobsolete . . . " (p. 205).

The author proves these points by further elucidation, and reveals
the secret meaning of more than one dead-letter narrative,
by showing that probably man was the primordial word -- "the very
first word possessed by the Hebrews, whoever they were, to carry
the idea by sound of a man. The essential of this word
was 113 (the numerical value of that word) from the beginning,
and carried with it the elements of the cosmical system displayed."

This is demonstrated by the Hindu Wittoba -- a form of Vishnu
-- as said already. The figure of Wittoba, even to the nail-marks
on the feet,* is that of Jesus crucified, in all its details
save the Cross; and that MAN was meant is proved to us further
by the fact of the Initiate beingreborn after his
crucifixion on the TREE OF LIFE. This "tree" has
now become exoterically, through its use by the Romans as an instrument
of torture, and the ignorance of the early Christian schemers,
the tree ofdeath!

Thus, one of the seven esoteric meanings implied in this
mystery of Crucifixion by the mystic inventors of the system --
the original elaboration and adoption of which dates back to the
very establishment of the MYSTERIES -- is discovered in the geometrical
symbols containing the history of the evolution of man. The Hebrews,
whose prophet Moses was so learned in the esoteric Wisdom of Egypt,
and who adopted their numerical system from the Phoenicians, and
later from the Gentiles, from whom they borrowed most of their
Kabalistic Mysticism, adapted, most ingeniously, the Cosmic and
anthropological symbols of the "heathen" nations to
their peculiar secret records. If Christian

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

* See Moor's Hindu Pantheon, where Wittoba's left foot bears the
mark of the

nail -- on the figure of his idol.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 561 THE MEANING OF THE CRUCIFIXION.

sacerdotalism has lost the key of it to-day, the early compilers
of the Christian Mysteries were well versed in Esoteric philosophy
and the Hebrew occult metrology, and used it dexterously. Thus
they took the word aish (one of the Hebrew word forms
for MAN) and used it in conjunction with that of Shanah "lunar
year," so mystically connected with the name of Jehovah,
the supposed "father" of Jesus, and embosomed the mystic
idea in an astronomical value and formula.

The original idea of "Man Crucified" in Space belongs
certainly to the ancient Hindus, and Muir shows it in his "Hindu
Pantheon" in the engraving that represents Wittoba. Plato
adopted it in his decussated Cross in Space, the
, "the Second God who impressed himself on the Universe in
the form of the Cross"; Krishna is likewise shown "crucified."
(See Dr. Lundy's Monumental Christianity, fig. 72.) Again
it is repeated in the Old Testament in the queer injunction to
crucify men before the Lord, the Sun -- which is
no prophecy at all, but has a direct phallic significance. In
§ II. of that same most suggestive work
on the Kabalistic meanings -- "The Hebrew-Egyptian Mystery,"
we read again: --

"In symbol, the nails of the cross have for the shape of
the heads thereof a solid pyramid, and a tapering square obeliscal
shaft, or phallic emblem, for the nail. Taking the position of
the three nails in the Man's extremities and on the cross,
they form or mark a triangle in shape, one nail being
at each corner of the triangle. The wounds or stigmata in
the extremities are necessarily four designative of the
square. . . . The three nails with the three
wounds are in number 6, which denotes the 6 faces of the cube
unfolded (which make the cross or man-form, or 7, counting
three horizontal and four vertical bars) on which the man is placed;
and this in turn points to the circular measure transferred on
to the edges of the cube. The one wound of the feet separates
into two when the feet are separated, making three
together for all, and four whenseparated,
or 7 in all -- another most holy (and with the
Jews)feminine base number."

Thus, while the phallic or sexual meaning of the "Crucifixion
Nails" is proven by the geometrical and numerical reading,
its mystical meaning is indicated by the short remarks upon it,
as given above, in its connection with, and bearing upon, Prometheus.
He is another victim, for he is crucified on the Cross of Love,
on the rock of human passions, a sacrifice to his devotion to
the cause of the spiritual element in Humanity.

Now, the primordial system, the double glyph that underlies the
idea of the Cross, is not "of human invention," for
Cosmic ideation and the Spiritual representation of the divine
Ego-man are at its basis. Later, it expanded in the beautiful
idea adopted by and represented in the Mysteries, that of regenerated
man, the mortal, who, by crucifying the man of flesh and his passions
on the

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 562 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

Procrustean bed of torture, became reborn as an Immortal. Leaving
the body, the animal-man, behind him, tied on the Cross of Initiation
like an empty chrysalis, the Ego Soul became as free as a butterfly.
Still later, owing to the gradual loss of spirituality, the cross
became in Cosmogony and Anthropology no higher than a phallic
symbol.

With the Esotericists, from the remotest times the Universal Soul
or anima mundi, the material reflection of the Immaterial
Ideal, was the Source of Life of all beings and of the life principle
of the three kingdoms; and it was Septenary with the
Hermetic philosophers, as with all ancients. For it is represented
as a Sevenfold cross, whose branches are respectively, light,
heat, electricity, terrestrial magnetism, astralradiation,
motion, and Intelligence, or what some call self-consciousness.

We have said it elsewhere. Long before the cross or its sign were
adopted as symbols of Christianity, the sign of the cross was
used as a sign of recognition among adepts and neophytes, the
latter being called Chrests (from Chrestos, man of tribulation
and sorrow). Says E. Levi: "The sign of the cross adopted
by the Christians does not belong exclusively to them. It is Kabalistic,
and represents the opposition and quaternary equilibrium of the
elements. We see by the Occult verse of the Paternoster that
there were originally two ways of making it, or, at least two
very different formulas to express its meaning -- one reserved
for priests-initiates, the other given to neophites and
the profane. Thus, for example, the initiate, carrying
his hand to his forehead, said: To thee; then he added,
belong: and continued, while carrying his hand to the
breast -- the kingdom; then, to the left shoulder --
justice: to the right shoulder -- and mercy. Then
he joined the two hands, adding: throughout the generating
cycles: 'Tibi sunt Malchut etGeburah et Chassed per
Aeonas' -- a sign of the Cross, absolutely and magnificently
kabalistic, which the profanations of Gnosticism made the militant
and official Church completely lose." (Dogma
et Ritual, etc., Vol. II., p. 88.)

The "militant and official Church" did more: having
helped herself to what had never belonged to her, she took only
that which the "profane" had, the Kabalistic meaning
of the male and female Sephiroth. She never
lost the inner and higher meaning since she never had
it -- E. Levi's pandering to Rome, notwithstanding. The sign of
the cross adopted by the Latin Church was phallic from
the beginning, while that of the Greeks was the cross of the neophytes,
the CHREST.